Dogwood Moon Sarabande
by Lady Rhiannon
Summary: You can only know someone so long before you begin to look past them. You can only want another for so long before you begin to see them in everything else. And lost people have their own gravity that pulls them together, sometimes.


- The lost have their own pace.  
>Theodore Roethke -<p>

It was kind of nice, Hinamori decided, this whole kissing business. Obviously, stories of melting clear down to your core and swooning and all that were clearly the exaggerated product of hormonal and inexperienced dormmates, but she'd figured that much out beforehand. That aside, it was warm, and made her feel tingly down to her toes, especially when Renji curved his hand around her waist just so. It was nice.

And so when he pulled back to judge her reaction, Hinamori gave a gentle tug on his collar to let him know that no, she didn't mind, and yes, continuing would be very nice indeed please. The book they'd been studying sat forgotten, momentarily, in lieu of their dalliances. Yes, they had an exam soon, and yes they needed to be studying... But when she'd solved one of the problems he'd been having trouble with, and he'd smiled just so when she laughed at him...

So it was sort of out of nowhere that she announced she had never actually been kissed and she'd quite like to try it sometime.

Renji had stared at her for a moment, just long enough for her to get flustered and start to insist that she'd meant nothing by it and she really shouldn't just blurt out her thoughts like that, and then he'd leaned in and kissed her. Which was nice of him.

It didn't take long to get the hang of it either, Hinamori thought vaguely, once you figured out what to do with your nose-and your hands. His hands were big, yes, with quick, unsure movements, not the steady, certain sort she was used to, as they ghosted over the fabric of her uniform, over the skin of her neck, arched up to meet his mouth. But it was still very nice. Renji would have agreed, enjoying the feel of her arm around his neck, her warmth against him.

But when he pulled back, Renji realized this just wasn't quite... right. And even thinking that seemed a disservice to his friend, his Hinamori-kun, and it really was nice... But when her eyes were liquid brass and not hard ice, when her hair glowed rich and deep velvet brown instead of flashing with blue highlights... It _was_ unfair to her, he knew, and yet... "I can't."

He said it softly, sadly, and she knew why. After all, he wasn't _him_, just as she wasn't someone else. Something of the other existed there, but it wasn't enough, and pretending it was wouldn't be fair to anyone. And so she laid a hand (_small like hers, but warmer_) on his cheek (_younger than his, still waiting_), and smiled sadly back and said, "I know."

For a moment, it was almost enough, balanced precariously on that edge of understanding. And then it went, as all moments must, and he helped her straighten her pigtails, and she flicked the collar of his uniform back into place, clean lines of white and blue no longer quite so crisp, and they smiled, and she asked him if he would like to practice kidou later with Kira and herself.

It might have never happened, really. When Kira showed up, fretting about some test or another, Hinamori soothed him, and Renji teased him, and the three were class one's finest trio again, even with their troubles and trials. After all, they were all young. In most people's view, that alone excused many sins.

Until she remembers it suddenly, decades later, coughing on the drink Kira gave her (he was being welcoming, he told Abarai primly, even though the three of them knew it was because he couldn't handle another just yet), just a flash of crimson and white that comes to her as Renji laughs and Kira protests. She doesn't say anything, laughs it off as having not been out drinking in a while. After all, she adds, half-joking, it's not as if she was allowed to drink in the hospital, right?

Kira sobers slightly at that, and she apologizes, reminds them both that she's fine now, really. It's a lull in the war, waiting for the other side to do something. There's only so much paperwork one can do while waiting for the world to come crashing down on you, and more often than not it's Matsumoto who drags the other lieutenants out drinking. Hinamori, of course, garnering an invitation when Matsumoto finally wheedled permission out of Isane for her. Out of all of them, Hinamori and Matsumoto understand the best and speak the least about it. They have their stories, their lies and half-fictions, and those hold up better if they aren't spoken of. Illusions are always that way. Kira and Hisagi try not to depress each other too much, and half the time it works and half the time Rangiku drags them home for either more sake or bed, Hinamori was never quite sure.

The rest of the night passes in the fashion that, for now, is a sort-of normal. Kira and Hisagi are shouting something, Matsumoto's laughing along, Hinamori's laughing at some dead-pan thing Renji said before adding his own laughter. For a moment Kira stops, wavering between the woman who is stronger than he or the one he thinks he needs to be strong for. But Hinamori laughs again and waves him off, Rangiku tossing out a joke about how it's a good thing one of them is a big strong shinigami, otherwise Renji would never get home, and then they're going separate ways to wander back to their home spheres, their laughter trailing them. Fifth and Sixth, not too far apart in the scheme of things, are in the same direction, and this too is a kind of normal: the two of them, finding the way home in the dark.

Except there it is again, the flash of memory, warm with the sake in her belly and she stumbles. It takes him a moment to remember to be concerned, but then he turns, a steadying hand on her shoulder. "Y'alright?"

Hinamori blinks up at him, eyes dark and colorless in the moonlight, and she knows he noticed it too. But, like she did, he laughs it off, finding refuge in jokes. "You're such a lightweight now, Momo-chan!" He never calls her that, mostly because she hates it and has made that quite clear. "Need to be carried home?"

"Hey!" All sins forgotten in friendship, she puffs up in indignation, ready to argue and he scoops her up like a feather and starts running and, oh, oh she hasn't laughed like this, really, truly laughed, in a long time. It feels good to do so, and as he carries her down the street, her shouts and hand-strikes keep up the joke for a little longer.

But then there's the fifth division before them, cool and serene in the moonlight, and he slows, not setting her down, and her hands still, white and fragile against the lay of his uniform. Hinamori bows her head, feels the way his hands tighten, just a little, where he's holding her, warm and big and so different despite the surface similarities. In the bleaching moonlight, she's as small and pale as a ghost, all dark hair and silence.

She can't even tell if she's the one caught again or if there's something here, now. All she can hear is her own heartbeat, feel his nearby. When she speaks, she barely realizes she's said it aloud, since it's been repeating in her head: "Come inside."

If she were polite, she knows, she would make it a request. If he were good, he knows, he'd refuse her. What has goodness and politeness brought them so far? Renji steps through the gate in answer and they make their way through the compound without speaking.

Once in her room, she stops, unsure of what to do now. Renji's fingers on the ties of her hakama, and his lips on the back of her neck, answers that. It seems like only moments-but fingers are clumsy with alcohol and she knows it probably takes longer-before she shivers as the cloth of her under-robe slides from her shoulders to pool around her ankles. Renji pulls away, and she glances from under the curtain of her hair, over her shoulder, as he sheds his own uniform with incongruent precision, for the amount she knows he drank. Despite the situation, she's embarrassed by watching, so she turns away, waiting instead.

Finally, he steps back to her, and she gasps, feeling him, all of him, pressed against her. Renji slides one large, warm hand up the gentle slope and curve of her stomach, covering a breast, and she whimpers. "Shhh," he says in the shell of her ear, and she bites off another inhalation to comply.

Like this, with her hair down, the pale, smooth, curve of her back, the nape of her neck bare and white as he lays lips to it, he can almost pretend it's someone else. He pushes into her slowly, one hand against the flat of her belly, and it's almost enough to undo him right there. Hinamori doesn't moan quite right, doesn't gasp quite how he's always imagined, but he loses himself in her anyway, feeling it when she goes over the precipice, lost in her own lies.

But not even moonlight can sustain the illusion, and they dress, and he goes, leaving only an apology that she dismisses in turn.

They don't talk about it the next day, or after that, or at all until it happens again, only different, because this time it's the middle of the day and technically she should be berating him for forgetting that piece of paperwork. And then she's shivering and shuddering against his fingers, her hands white-knuckled on the desk, barely aware of the feel of his forehead pressed to her shoulder and his own harsh breathing. Then again, they don't talk about that either, when he walks out leaving the late afternoon sunlight slanting in and comes back later with the missing paper and his usual attitude.

It keeps happening though, at night after drinking, in the middle of the day, whenever. Always opportunistic, one or the other of them providing the initiative, never looking at each other, and always both aware, before and after, that they've been looking for someone else in the guise of the other.

When Renji leaves for the living world, it stops, and the two of them act like it never happened. If anyone would even think to ask, Hinamori wonders if she could even say she's really slept with Renji, since she's fairly sure he's never been thinking of her, during the act. After all, it's the same for her, or was. Imagining different hands, a different voice...

The voice that calls to her, in the middle of a battle. When she falls and he raises her back up, she's so thoroughly wrapped in the lies she's tied around herself, she falls again to the illusions, and then to the blade through her heart from her friend and near-brother.

And yet she survives. Somehow, she does. She wonders how. Didn't Captain Unohana say something once, about wanting to live in order to survive? Though being hooked up to machines and tubes and other cold unfeeling things in the Twelfth Division doesn't really seem like living to her, really. Like being caught in limbo, even after they let her go, the world strange and muted.

She crosses paths with Renji, after they discharge her with strict orders for bedrest, and everything is normal again, in that weird way. He asks about her, and makes sure she makes it back to the Fifth Division and into bed, and then leaves again. Hinamori wonders if that's it then, if she's to be stuck like this forever. He lays his lips against her white-clothed shoulder and she reminds herself that this too is normal, or was, once.

Until she breaks the pattern. Not knowing-barely caring-if he'll get angry at this betrayal, if he'll leave because she isn't what he wanted. But she's tired of being someone else, tonight. Hinamori turns in his arms and he's staring at her like he just realized she was there, which is what she was afraid of... But there's something else there as well, in his gaze. For a dizzy moment she fears it's revulsion, rejecting her outright because she isn't right, before she realizes it's consideration. When he kisses her this time, he looks at her first. When he lays her down (_gently, gently, I don' think this counts as bedrest_), she looks, really looks at him, the dark, strange markings of his face, the long strands of red silk that tangle under her fingers. Renji's hands trace quick and light over her scars, fresh and old, never enough to hurt, but cataloging her as if discovering for the first time.

How different he is, really, she thinks afterward; how could she have compared him to another? Renji is the solidity of bone and the ring of brass, bright and hot, while the other, he was the endless fog of illusion and cold steel slipping through silk. His thoughts unknowingly echo hers, thoughts of fire and warmth and a slow-blooming loveliness-a different sort of beauty from that of ice and crystalline integrity.

It isn't perfect. It isn't what they wanted, but for one night, it's enough. When the light comes in the morning, she smiles, and he sees.


End file.
